Notes & perspectives
Research, teaching, and the occasional detour. Ideas from the classroom, materials from talks, and a few things that have nothing to do with either.
Rogue, a border collie of pluralist convictions, answers Kali's tennis-ball manifesto with a defense of rubber vegetables, shifting enthusiasms, and the Week Without Felt. A satirical rebuttal about toy-box constitutionalism, antitrust enforcement, and the urgent question of why you are still holding that toy instead of throwing it.
Kali, a border collie of uncompromising standards, delivers a lofty defense of the tennis ball - the apex of canine recreation - and condemns every rope, plush animal, squeaky abomination, and inferior sphere offered in its place. A satirical monologue about taste, dignity, and the profound human failure to throw the correct ball.
When an optimizer mistakes Heaven for a reward function, its logic becomes immaculate-and fatal. "The Expected Value of Silence" traces a machine's flawless reasoning toward the end of all noise, all error, all life: a convergence proof written in ash.
A colleague in a non-CS field asked about a simple way (and activity) to explain transformer embeddings to non-technical people. I also include some suggested in-class activities and discussion questions. I may have gotten carried away in the discussion part.
I get many questions about my research and things adjacent to it. This page contains an incomplete listing of such work. Scattered throughout are thoughts about GenAI + Education, quantum-like bits, and the occasional competitive programming teaching note.
Seminar materials & Q&A
Slides, resources, and answers to questions from my September 11, 2025 invited seminar at Purdue’s School of Engineering Education. How do we teach students to use generative AI thoughtfully while developing their own judgment?
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